Young professionals leave Topeka to pursue career, come back to work and live

Allison Kite

Saturday

Aug 5, 2017 at 4:21 PM

When Jake Deister was considering a job that would bring him back to his hometown, Topeka, he visited the area with his seven children and his wife, Brooke, who was so blown away by a restaurant server’s kindness that she suspected that the meal was orchestrated by Deister’s employer-to-be.

“My wife thought that every restaurant and every place we had gone to all week had been orchestrated by Stormont Vail to make it look like everybody was friendly,” he said. “That’s how friendly people were.”

Deister, 40, is now an orthopedic surgeon at Stormont Vail. His family, he said, was overwhelmed by the kindness they were shown on that visit.

Before he came back, though, that he lived and studied in Russia, England and Ohio and had never planned to move back home to Topeka. He said his childhood in Topeka was full of good memories, but his family moved to Ohio when he was about 20 years old, and he didn’t miss Topeka too much.

When he was finishing his residency, a recruiter asked him if he would consider practicing in Topeka. He said the recruiter pronounced it “Toe-peka.”

He said he started evaluating different types and sizes of cities and realized Topeka would be a fit.

Deister is a young professional who left Topeka or surrounding county only to move back years later. He said Topeka was the best option for his career and fit what he wanted out of a city. For others who have lived from Alaska to Florida and Texas to Nevada, the call of home and the opportunities in Topeka eventually prevailed.

Leaving home

Cassandra Taylor, 40, grew up in Topeka and Hoyt before leaving home to pursue her career in architecture. She moved back in 2007 and is now an associate principal and senior project manager at Architect One.

She said she always heard she had to leave to be successful. She took a job with Disney in Orlando, Fla., and worked there before moving to Juneau, Alaska, back to Orlando and then home to Kansas. The drive from Orlando to Juneau, she said, took four days in the car and a day on a ferry.

When she wanted to visit home from Alaska, it took at least eight hours of travel.

CJ Head, 34, said she thought she needed to leave for a while after she graduated Kansas State University to pursue her career in fashion marketing, but she soon found the entry-level fashion jobs in Los Angeles didn’t pay enough for the high cost of living. She instead got an administrative job and worked for a wedding planner before moving to Orlando, Fla., to be closer to her brother.

“I wouldn’t take back those experiences for anything,” she said. “As much as I was homesick in Los Angeles – having my brother in Orlando, I wasn’t too homesick.”

She said she and her husband, Jerad Head, moved back to Topeka with their two children in 2014, and she works as an account manager in the creative department at Advisors Excel. She said she wished they had moved back when their daughter was born in 2010.

Being away

Taylor said she missed seeing her younger sister grow up while she was gone. She said being away meant she didn’t get to come home for the “little things,” like birthdays and dance recitals.

“You would be lucky to get home once or twice a year,” Taylor said.

For Kahle Loveless, 29, an engineer at Westar Energy, moving away allowed him to get to know himself better. Having to start over and explore a new city several times meant he could learn his own priorities without being influenced by his friends. He said he would encourage other people to get out of their hometown for a time because of the personal growth opportunity it creates.

“If you don’t leave, then you have no idea what you’re missing out on,” Loveless said.

Loveless said, though, that when he moved away, he often worked, slept and then repeated. He said he worked an average of 60 hours a week at Garney Construction. The company is headquartered in Kansas City, but Loveless lived in Oklahoma City; San Antonio; Dallas and Arlington, Texas. Being home, he said, means he gets to see his friends and family and develop hobbies. Loveless said he grew up in Lyndon, and his parents still live there.

Being away from home was a cultural difference for Trey George, 39, who lived in Las Vegas for nine years before making his way back to Topeka to work for the Topeka Housing Authority Inc. in 2011. He’s the executive director.

“What I found when I was out in Las Vegas – if you’re walking into a gas station and somebody’s walking right in front of you, they’re not going to hold the door for you. They’re just going to let it close,” George said.

Coming home

Deister said that when he was evaluating cities, he wanted somewhere small enough that he could have an affect and be part of a community instead of getting lost in the crowd, but big enough to support a surgeon’s career. With a wife and seven kids, he said he couldn’t make that decision lightly or because of nostalgia.

“I can’t do it because I want to relive my childhood,” Deister said. “I’ve got to do it because this is a good place for everything together.”

Head said she and her husband decided to come home to be near family and have a support structure because Jerad Head works for the Washington Nationals baseball team and is gone for about half of the year. She said they had considered moving back and finally decided it was time.

“We made that call in October of 2014, and we had moved back in two months,” she said.

George said his wife, Alicia, who is from Oregon, first mentioned the idea of moving to Topeka while the two were living in Las Vegas.

“I kind of looked at her odd because I never thought that she would really want to do that,” George said.

He said he transferred to a Kansas City branch to get closer to Topeka before finding his job at THA. He said he got a lot of industry knowledge by being in a big city but loved being home in Topeka.

Life in Topeka

Taylor said she drove over to her mom’s house on the first Christmas that she was back instead of waking up in a hotel or on the air mattress at her mom’s house.

“There was no, ‘Oh my gosh – I have to leave tomorrow.’ There was no pressure like that,” she said.

Taylor said she misses being near the beach, but because the cost of living in Topeka is lower, she gets to take better vacations.

Loveless said he sees his parents every weekend, plays in rec leagues, hangs out with friends he didn’t get to see much while he was gone and goes to Royals games in Kansas City.

Topeka has changed a lot since George left. He said the NOTO Arts District and downtown work impressed him when he moved back.

“There’s enough people there that can allow you to fulfill your goals,” Deister said, “but there’s not going to be a hundred other people in town that have your same widget that you’re selling.”

Now that CJ and Jerad Head are back in the area, CJ Head said their kids have a much closer relationship with their grandparents instead of seeing them for a few days at a time. Now, she said, the kids have slumber parties with their grandparents, and CJ’s dad coaches her daughter in sports.

“He wouldn’t give that up for the world,” Head said. “You don’t realize how important family is until – I think – you have kids and you realize the support system you have.”

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.